Stephen B. Young, The Daily Record Newswire
Any falling short in academic achievement for young Americans is unacceptable for two reasons.
For individuals, academic underachievement sentences them, in general, to the lower rungs of economic prosperity over their lifetimes; for the state and the nation, academic underachievement precludes optimal economic growth.
As capitalism has evolved in recent decades, the contributions of tangible factors such as land, raw materials, financial capital, plant and equipment have taken second place to intangible factors such as human capital, innovation, and service. Economic growth turns more and more on people power, not money power.
An advanced economy also needs high levels of individual consumption to drive market growth. Such consumption can only arise from the wages paid to workers and the returns provided for their capital contributions. More highly educated workers will become more robust consumers.
The continuing achievement gap in educational outcomes among different subcultures is even more intolerable as a matter of social justice and sagacious economic planning, because we have spent generously on teachers and facilities and busing over several decades with little to show for it in reduction of the achievement gap.
It is time for a re-think.
I would like to suggest that we reframe the problem of the achievement gap away from one paradigm to a different one. We might get better social justice results if we were less caught up in historical realities and more focused on the future possibilities inherent in individual students.
I would argue that much of the analysis of the causes of the most worrisome achievement gap, which is between African-American students and white students, has stayed within the traditional paradigm of institutional racism — the legacy of slavery, segregation, and their resulting challenges to African-Americans.
Part of the impact of this conventional social and cultural discourse about the achievement gap is to pull our conversations away from considerations of behaviors within different American subcultures. We do this because we admirably don’t want to add fuel to past discriminatory judgments and reinforce now untenable conceits of white privilege.
We are legitimately afraid of trespassing into a sensitive zone of cultural determinism of educational outcomes.
We would, however, enter into a different zone of discourse and policy if we took up Martin Luther King’s dichotomy of “color” and “character” to focus on character and individual potential, as he recommended in his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech.
How can we talk about individual character fairly and wisely? Especially when we come from disparate subcultures that are not cookie-cutter versions of one another. Can we ever arrive at a point where we all have a common standard of good character by which to shape the behaviors of all young Americans?
Here modern science has come to our rescue.
The disciplines of neuro-biology and psychological anthropology, along with new conclusions from evolutionary biology, have given us a new way of thinking about individual character. A good starting point to learn about this new way approach to who we are and what we can become is Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind.”
The assertion of all this new learning is that each human person comes into the world with a moral sense ready and able to be developed into traits of good character.
If we work on developing this moral sense, we can reduce the achievement gap.
Because we each have a moral sense, not one of us is predestined for failure.
Education and learning are to a large extent the result of personal application. Education is not what the teacher puts into our heads but what our heads appropriate from what goes on around us to store in our minds for future use. Educational outcomes vary greatly according to the efforts made by the student to learn. Greater effort produces higher outcomes.
The moral sense, or character, lies behind the direction and the quality of our efforts to make something of ourselves. The moral sense contributes to our educational achievements.
The capacity for moral sense development is universal across races and cultures. To place our expectations of individual performance on the growth of personal character is not to discriminate among races or cultures, but merely to recognize something inherent in our common humanity.
One most interesting dimension of this new learning, which was brought to my attention by former Congressman and Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser, is called “executive functioning.”
This scientific conclusion reveals that much significant decision-making takes place in our pre-frontal cortex and not in other parts of our brains. Juicing up the pre-frontal cortex enhances our executive decision-making capabilities. And research is showing how we can create environments and experiences for young children that will boost the activity levels of their pre-frontal cortexes.
Each of our brains contains the neuro-transmitter oxytocin. Oxytocin rewards us with pleasing mental states when we engage with others in a trusting manner and become more reliable and supportive. It is nature’s way of making sure that new mothers want to nurse and care for their newborn children. If mothers in the past had not assiduously attended to this responsibility, the human race would never have made it out of pre-history. We are here — individually and collectively — due to the moral sense.
Rethinking the evolution of our species has diverted scholarly attention away from the combative and competitive individualism necessary for a struggle to survive and to be among the fittest. New organization of the evidence about evolution now points to cooperation, sociability, and division of labor with mutual interdependence as the reasons for the successful evolution of homo sapiens down to our times.
Evolution has therefore disposed each of us to be moral and communal in the way our minds work. We become more successful in life to the degree we learn to become part of a larger social whole. The capacity for this self-discipline to meet the expectations of others has been called our “character.”
Enhancing that strength of character — which arises from universal human moral capacity — would contribute to educational outcomes in several ways.
First it would address truancy. The first requirement of education is that the student be present. Larry McGuire of Litchfield developed a character education program some years ago that dramatically reduced truancy in inner city schools in Ohio. When students actually show up in the classroom, they can learn reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. If they don’t show up, well, what can we expect of their educational achievements?
Second, habits of good character promote time-on-task capability. Application of the mind to the lesson or the experience at hand is necessary for learning to occur.
Third, good character permits the student to accept discipline and instruction. Character offsets temptations to act out or hack off. In all cultures and under all religions, the moral mind is a constructive counterweight to license, to stupid allocation of emotional energies, to dysfunction, and to anger, fear and resentment. The human potential of the moral sense is grounds for the progress and development of our species.
The passions and desires of individualism are constrained by our inherent moral constitution as living creatures made for social engagement. Within our pursuit of individual self-actualization lies a natural need for moral development. As the poet John Donne wrote, no person is an island unto his or her self.
Fourth, good character is the basis for responsible leadership. The character features of our minds provide steadiness under pressure, build self-confidence, and permit us to learn from others without feeling marginalized or put down when we come up a bit short in performing any task. Becoming aware of our capabilities and strengths enhances our educational achievements.
By activating the moral sense and through good character development, students can improve their educational outcomes. If human nature has given us this road to success, why shouldn’t we follow it?
